1.1.9-Pilferingapples
Brick!club Book 1 Ch. 9 The Brother Portrayed By The Sister OR “A Sister’s Account of Her Brother” In Which I Become Sort of Glad There Are So Few Female Leads In Les Mis …Because oh, HUGO. No. If my Womanly Instincts were in fact that delicate, they would have given me some sort of warning about this chapter. Sigh. It’s painful to watch Baptistine dismissing her own feelings and revelling in the confidence that she will die with her brother, but that I could almost accept as the impulse of a loving sister; I feel worse for Magloire. WHY IS SHE STAYING WITH THESE PEOPLE, THEY HAVE NO SENSE. What happens to her if they both get murdered or die of illness contracted in a fit of piety? No, really. What? They can’t be paying her enough to have any sort of retirement fund. Would she be placed with another house of church workers? It says she’s expecting to die if they do and I guess so if that’s her only living provision?!? I am maybe over-invested in Magloire. On the plus side, look at all those lovely paintings hiding under the tacky tacky wallpaper! Is that an allegory or analogy or something for how these women are being beautified by stripping away their worldly concerns in the service of God and other people? I’d say that seems too obvious, but, well. Hugo. One note- someone was saying that Hugo seems to idealize women for being basically telepathic, which he does, but I think he sort of holds up Wordless Communication as an ideal for close relationships in general? I mean we’ll see that again with Les Amis, in the closest homosocial relationships the book offers. So I think that at least is just sort of a Hugolian general ideal? Commentary Gascon-en-exile Epistolary style is clearly unsuited to Hugo, because even with all the little meaningless tidbits about family names and adorable relations this “letter” is still first and foremost yet another Hugolian thematic piece. I think it’s feasible to read the paintings as analogous to the spirituality of the women’s asceticism, but given the neoclassical content of the one painting described there may also be something there about the progression from neoclassical extravagance to utilitarianism - and then eventually away from the utilitarian, as I brought up a few chapters ago. Domestic, empathetic, silently submissive…do I detect some angels in the house? No, really. I went into this in my first Feminizing Enjolras post on angels, but non-English writers seemed to really enjoy appropriating Victorian character types and using them in different ways, and Baptistine and Magloire are technically in the position of an old maid and widow but functionally behave as angels to the celibate pater familias. That’s why they’re so bland and quietly offensive, yay! I didn’t want to go too long here because I’m still wiped out from those three long posts because I know the next chapter is quite large and will likely prompt a fair bit of commentary Sarah1281 I just want to hold an intervention for them so badly. They shouldn’t have to live like this! It’s one thing if people who literally have no choice but to live like that do but there is no reason at all why they can’t have their basic needs met that does not say some pretty bad things about Hugo’s saintly Bishop. And I just really do not feel that Hugo understood women very well if he can’t manage them as anything but crazy or bad people or annoyingly self-depriving creatures eager to lose everything about themselves in the greatness of the men in their life. I mean, I know that higher-class women back then had to be very submissive but not THIS submissive. Kcrabb88 As much as I love the Bishop (and I do, he’s awesome!) his continual insistence about not locking the doors, etc, astounds me. I mean, I understand he wants his door open to all at any time, but WHY does that have to be taken so literally? I mean I’ve been Catholic my whole life and I still always check to see if the door is locked, I look behind me when I walk alone at night in the city, all that kind of thing. If someone needed the bishop, couldn’t they knock, or something? And he could, you know, open the door and make sure they weren’t a serial killer, or anything like that. If I were Baptistine or Magloire I would just really want to lock the doors after he went to bed and unlock them before he woke up, but they are more obedient than I could ever be in this instance. And much as I respect the bishop, I do really feel bad for Baptistine and Magloire here, and not just because of the way they have to live, but also because of how much Baptistine in particular must worry about her brother when he goes out and does dangerous things. She mentions the robbers incident and him being gone for two weeks and them thinking him dead, and I think that’s just the worst part. Yes he’s her bishop, but even more so he’s her brother, and in her mind her life is tied to his. The two women are clearly suffering because of the bishop’s choices, even if the bishop’s choices are utterly selfless ones that want to help the poor and anyone who comes knocking on his (unlocked) door. It’s hard though, to be fully angry at the bishop because I know he’s not causing them this worry and hardship out of cruelty; I don’t really think he’s all that capable of being cruel. It’s almost like it just…doesn’t occur to him, which makes me me more frustrated than full-on angry. I guess it’s a really interesting look into how the lives of women were still largely utterly controlled by men at the time and the negative effects of that, even if that man was an incredibly kind soul. Theonlycheeseleft My meta here isn’t going to be very long or in-depth, because I am mostly just YES TO ALL THIS. The rhetoric of Baptistine’s letter is actually kind of frightening here: At first I used to say to myself, “There are no dangers which will stop him; he is terrible.” Now I have ended by getting used to it. I make a sign to Madam Magloire that she is not to oppose him. He risks himself as he sees fit. Yikes. This feels very much like a woman who has basically succumbed to the constant fear she is living in. She sounds almost numb, the praise of her brother near rote. I get that this is probably partly due to the language, Hugo’s prose style, the formality of letters, etc. but still. Is this the language of a woman who is happy and comfortable in her own home? I think not. Even more so with Magloire (I think I might also be over-invested in her). The last line is brutal: Moreover, Baptistine said, as we have just read, that her brother’s end would prove her own. Madame Magloire did not say this, but she knew it. She knew it. She knew it. She does not make any excuses for the Bishop, as Baptistine does. She knows that if the Bishop’s recklessness invites any sort of danger, she’s dead. And as Pilf said, this does invite the question of WHY ARE YOU THERE? I want Magloire’s backstory, for serious. Also, I do really like this Hugo Wordless Communication Idea, and I’m very interested to see, in future chapters where such communication might be present *cough*Amis*cough*, how Hugo explains it, because it’s certainly not the “special feminine genius that comprehends the man better than he comprehends himself.” ARGH.